War of the Five Zanzibars

High Commander Varkus

Born in Sembia as the third son of a minor lord, Peterbilt Varkus joined the occupying Cormyrean forces as a squire to Sir Horis Jannassar, a Purple Dragon Knight with roots in Waterdeep and Calamshan. Varkus was steeped in the multi-racial and multi-cultural military tradition of the Imperial Vanguard, the far flung expeditionary forces of the Cormyrean Empire.

Made up of elite warriors from every part of the continent, the Western Vanguard enforced the laws and sovereignty of Zanzibar, the ruling King of Cormyr and Emperor of Faerûn, from Calam in the south to Neverwinter in the north. Its twin force, the Eastern Sentinel, occupied Sembia and established the borders with the necromancer-ruled lands of Thay.

Together, they form the military arm of the 500-year-old dynasty of rulers and their government which unified the cities and lands of the civilized world following the defeat of Asmodeus at Waterdeep and the end of the Infanta Crisis.

As a squire and then a young knight, Varkus fought in a half dozen wars and countless battles against the Orcs of the Anauroch, the undead hordes of Thayan radicals, giants, Drow, beasts, and occasional demons. His valor and strategy came to be highly valued by his commanders, and he quickly rose through the ranks of knights to become the Captain of a crack troop of cavalry and attached War Wizards who called themselves “The Violets.”

In DR 1993 their invasion of the Anauroch to secure a Netherese ruin from Orcish raiders was written about in the popular novel Violets in the Dune by Volothamp Geddarm, making Varkus a folk hero and a paragon of Cormyrean might and valor. Five years later, Zanzibar the Penitent named him Marshall of the Western Vanguard and charged him with the governorship of Waterdeep, its harbor, and the surrounding lands. This may have been as much to guard the Empire’s westerly flank as to remove Varkus from the capital.

Marshall of the Western Vanguard

Today, he commands the Western Vanguard from his headquarters in Waterdeep, at Fort Maximillien, established on the site of the ruined tavern where the final battle against Asmodeus took place. His knights patrol the ports and the military installations of the city, but the city watch and its griffon riders are also responsible for their traditional duties and keep their own jails, courts, and laws.

The presence of Cormyrean knights was welcome in the first years following the Infanta Wars, and after centuries, has become normal for the people of the City of Splendor. The city has maintained a semi-autonomous government throughout its vassaldom, with the Masked Lords of Waterdeep ruling the city as an oligarchy, naming an unmasked Lord every seven years, who doubled as local magistrate and official ambassador to the imperial court at Suzail.

The merchants feel the Zanzibar’s hand most firmly. The trade of Waterdeep is heavily taxed and regulated due to a regime of punitive laws put in place to destroy the Sword Coast Trading Company and any influence it held in the region. Its franchise was revoked across the Empire but its influence traveled underground.

 

 

Following the defeat of Wainwright St. Cloud, the Company was acquired and refitted by Revan Darkcember, a titled Lord of Cormyr and a Masked Lord of Waterdeep. During his lifetime, the Zanzibar the Elder, the First Emperor of Faerun and Darkcember feuded over control of the Empire’s trade. In the name of imperial power and erasing the influence of the corrupted St. Cloud and his dealings, Zanzibar seized many of the Company’s assets around Faerûn, forcing Darkcember’s organization to retreat to the Underdark and into black markets, where they continue to hold influence today.

Those who know, know that the Company’s main business is not simply in Faerûn, but spread across the many planes and the Astral Sea itself.

But this dominated peace cannot last forever. The guilds of Waterdeep have been upset for decades at the unrelenting taxes and export controls they must adhere to under the purple yoke. The older houses of Waterdeep have begun to acquire their old seats on the Lord’s council again, and the Unmasked Lord for the last seven years has been the outspoken separatist Ap Dijksterhuis, who refused to visit the imperial capital and pay tribute to the lame duck Zanzibar William the Melancholy. General Varkas has witnessed a general degradation of common sentiment against the Empire and has expressed these concerns to the Lords’ Council and the Zanzibar himself.

The Four Rebellions

Zanzibar the Melancholy, formerly Prince William Wenly Zarusson, has occupied the Glass Throne for only a month, following the death of his elderly father Zanzibar the Penitent. Known as a holy and pious man to all but those who knew him, William’s father the late emperor of Cormyr gave over nearly all political and military control of the Empire to his armies, his rivals, and his laconic son, who as Prince of Punis attempted to keep the city in a nearly four-year long festival in order to cheer him up. It did not work, but it spurned a renaissance of art and culture in the Dalelands, which along with the rise of factions throughout the Empire, has destabilized the otherwise stalwart and conservative populace in the imperial core.

 

 

The Zarus Cult

The Cormyrean Empire established by the First Zanzibar exalted a state patron deity in Zarus, the human god of sentinels and conquest. When the Infanta Crisis lifted and the Zarus Infanta was divested from her holy avatar, the god left her with a great blessing — that she would be Empress of the world and her progeny would rule forever.

This proved to be largely true, as every Zanzibar from then until now claimed direct descendance from her holy blood, each a scion of the god Zarus himself.

As the centuries went on, this royal blood spread among the noble houses of Cormyr and beyond, and those claiming a direct line to the Holy Matron of the Zanzibars were numerous. With time, the influence of the priesthood waned while the symbolism of this bloodline remained.

It was not until just a few decades ago that the priests of the Divine Citadel in Cormyr, the seat of the Zarusian faith, were again the center of Zarus worship in Faerûn.

The writings of a Punisean prophet and ascetic named Anita Horsecock foretold the coming of a new Infanta of Zarus, from the line of Zanzibars but outside its halls of power. She formed an order of clerics and monks from the most zealous in the Church and established a monastery in the Dalelands, outside the cities.

It was there that a young princeling of a minor house named Zellmo was brought as a baby. His mother, the Lady Zellmo, was a true believer in the Horsecock Prophecy and was convinced that her child was the baby of destiny. She devoted all her family wealth to the cult, and her son became its object of adoration.

As Zellmo reached the age of six, he began to demand more from his followers — improved living quarters and belongings. Eventually, he demanded to rule a kingdom and began to openly question the authority of the ruling Zanzibar. His followers radicalized, pledging to install him as the new Zanzibar and triggering a civil conflict that would develop into a full-scale rebellion.

The Witch Queen of Myth Drannor

Once counted among the brightest lights of the royal bloodline, Princess Zythara Rosanne bin Laden, known now only by the epithet the Witch Queen, was once the Emperor’s favored cousin, a prodigy of the Arcaneum, and a powerful sorceress. She was said to command storms before she was sixteen, and to have rebuilt the shattered Mirrors of Netheril by her twenty-third year. Her brilliance, however, drew envy and fear in equal measure.

When the elder Zanzibar the Penitent decreed that all arcane study must be subject to ecclesiastical oversight, a gesture to the strengthening priesthood of Zarus meant to curb the excesses of the Arcaneum and its War Wizards, Zythara protested publicly that the Emperor must not allow the mistakes of the past to be relived. Her defiance was taken as heresy. Stripped of her titles and threatened with execution, she fled with her apprentices and retainers into the forests of Cormanthor, bearing with her tomes, relics, and the last remaining vault keys of the Arcanum, which remains sealed shut to this day.

 

 

It was the Elves who sheltered her. In secret, they granted her passage through the ruins of Myth Drannor, and with the surviving High Mages of Motherstone, she rekindled the city’s mythal — the ancient magical barrier that bends light, matter, and will. Behind it she established her hidden domain, a court of exiles, scholars, and renegades devoted to preserving the knowledge the Empire sought to chain.

Now her name is spoken in the pulpits of the Zarusian Church as that of a blasphemer, an Anti-Infanta, the Fallen Flame of the Shieldfather. From behind the mythal her agents move unseen across the plane, bewitching the powerful and righteous and and kindling rebellions in her name. Rumors claim that she prepares a weapon wrought from the fused hearts of dragons and suns, and that she will one day burn the purple banners from the sky in vengeance for her stolen crown.

General Varkus and the Purple Dragons

Once the most decorated commander of the Purple Dragon Knights, General Peterbilt Varkus was the steadfast shield of the Empire. When William the Melancholy issued early decrees to dismantle the Western and Eastern commands in favor of direct Imperial control, replacing seasoned officers with sycophants and pacificists, winding down long planned campaigns and stripping war heroes of their spoils and honors, Varkus refused to obey. His refusal was met with great support from the rank, file and brass of the Purple Dragon Knights and many of the War Wizard command abroad.

Rather than submit, Varkus proclaimed the March of the Free West, declaring loyalty not to the throne, but to the people of the Empire and the traditions of its most exhalted institutions. From Fort Maximillien, Varkus issued his Proclamation, swearing to restore the honor of the Crown by opposing the Emperor who had forsaken it. This effort is violently opposed by the people in the lands his forces occupy, and before he can march on the Capital he must secure his rear, where conspirators in league with the Zanzibar and the other rebellions seek to ruin him and hobble his host.

Negende Zonen (The Zooners)

Once a largely ignored group of outlaws and scofflaws operating on the edges of the Aunuroch, the Negende Zonen (Ninth Sons), often simply called Zooners by their friends and foes, have built a stable base of operations outside the easy reach of the Purple Dragons or the Witch Queen and her rangers, living amongst the desert caves and canyons of the southern desert.

Their leader Modle Negen is a brigand who reportedly claims descendence from the Zanzibars of long ago, but little else is known about him or her.